I have had 2 sessions with the “specialist chiropractor” – she uses the Webster Technique to turn breech babies. The first one was on Saturday (she came in on her day off for a new patient!), and the second one was yesterday morning. Neither of us thought the baby had done anything except bend from side to side.
When I was there on Saturday, she was looking at my belly (to be able to hit the right spots working on my ligaments), and she leaned in really close while Tim was out of the room chasing J-man, and very softly and gently asked me if I had had the fingerprint bruises on my belly BEFORE I had the version attempt. For me, it was a wake-up call to remember that pregnancy is a dangerous time in many relationships. I hadn’t even THOUGHT about the fact that she probably does see women who are being abused during pregnancy. In my case, it was funny, because Tim is probably the most gentle man in the entire world… but it’s truly sad that she sees enough of it that she thought to ask.
Had an OB appointment yesterday afternoon, and she was running late. (This is one of my favorite OBs, partly because she delivered the J-man, partly because she never tries to make me feel stupid, and partly because she doesn’t give me shit about my weight. Tim thinks she’s a ditz.) We sat there for over an HOUR waiting for her, and every 15 minutes I had to go potty, because, you know, I am 38 weeks pregnant. One of the lab techs told me I would have the baby within a couple of days because when she had started going to the bathroom every 15 minutes, her baby had arrived within 2 days. I was all, “Yeah, but he’s breech, and you know I don’t seem to be able to go into labor on my own anyway. Plus, I had a bottle of water on the way over.”
So we saw the doctor, and she listened for the heartbeat, and all that was good… and she said, “Do you want to go ahead and schedule the c-section?” She could tell immediately I wasn’t into having the c-section (she GASPED when she saw my bruise from the version attempt), and asked if I thought he had turned. I told her no, that even though I was going to the Woo Chiro, I didn’t think the Bean had turned. She sort of rolled her eyes about the Woo Chiro (and so did we) but went out and asked for the ultrasound machine anyway.
She gelled up the belly, and started looking around, and looked worried. I panicked because even though we had just heard the heartbeat, you never want the OB to look worried. All of a sudden, she lifted up the ultrasound controller thingy, and set it right below where the big-ass bruise is… and said, “You’re not going to believe this. He’s head down!”
ALL HAIL THE POWER OF THE WOO!
Posts that hopefully are similar:
- Worry and scaredness
- Getting into the Woo now
- In Which I Disappoint
- More “Why I’ve not been blogging”
- Teaching the Doctor
- Thankful
- The last day before everything changes – again
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
In general, I’m a skeptic about various techniques and therapies unless you can show me some real studies that something has a track record of working. And autism draws woo like flies to a picnic. The ‘we tested 8 kids at my son’s birthday party and found that facing east reduced autism symptoms by 40%’ or ‘autism is caused by misaligned astral projections’ type nonsense is everywhere. There are so many studies now that wouldn’t make it out of a 7th grade science fair, but yet, there they are.
Easy-to-remember definition of ‘woo’ – if it makes you say “Wooooo, you’ve got to be kidding.” then it may very well be woo.
I’m a huge fan of chiropractic because it’s kept me from being an invalid with all my back issues, so this wasn’t a big leap for me to believe it could have possibilities, though we can’t prove this caused him to flip or anything. Whatever did it, we’re not going to fight it!
Compared to some of the autism treatments I’ve heard, this technique for trying to flip breech babies is low on the woo spectrum to me.
Woo hoo for the woo of the baby-turning!
Now, get out there and birth that kiddo!
(Tim, good point about the low-scale woo. I agree.)
YEAH!!!